Finally Letting It Out

There's something I've been wanting to talk about but I've been doing my absolute best at hiding it for the past 13 years. I fear that if people know, they'll think I'm inadequate. Part of the problem is this mindset I've created for myself with the belief that I have to be perfect. If I have something wrong with me I'll let many people down and eventually I'll be tossed to the side, ridiculed or people will think of me as being helpless. I know this won't actually happen with most people but these are the thoughts I've created for myself.

The demon I struggle with is STUTTERING. I usually don't repeat syllables I have a problem with blocking. Blocking is when you go to say a word but it just doesn't come out. As a work around I will use the "uh" sound to start a word or simply use word substitution. I try my best at not letting this control my life but I admit that sometimes my decisions to converse with people or be in large groups is effected by it. Certain situations also effect my blocking, if I have to speak to a superior, if the person for whatever reason intimidates me, confrontations, speaking in front of people, talking on the phone, the need to state a title before someone's name, different situations have different effects...

So far I've been able to live a pretty normal life dealing with this but some days are A LOT worse than others. It can be excruciatingly unbearable at times but this is the life I live... I don't mind talking about this in person but all I ask is that you DON''T feel sympathy for me.

The reason I'm posting this is to perhaps help myself come to terms with my imperfection. Sometimes if I'm not talkative I think people tend to think I don't like them. It's unfair to some people in my life because they might never understand this about me. I've met and worked with some wonderful people but if I perceive them as intimidating then I usually break communication off with them, for the fact of having anxiety and blocking when speaking to them.

This whole stuttering thing is what I was actually referring to when I wrote about a dream 5 years ago, you can read it here: http://mp3markel.blogspot.com/2011/06/details-on-holes-in-ireland-and-oven.html That dream was a perfect representation of what it feels like having to deal with stuttering. If you have any questions feel free to leave them here, I need to work on opening up on talking about this.

Revenant: A person who has returned from the dead.

If you follow my blog here you'll know that movies inspire me. I watched the Revenant tonight and I feel inspired...

For a few days now I've been making it a point to read the Bible. I feel like if I'm going to claim to be a Christian than I should have read the Bible, at least once. I've written about this before but now I'm doing it! I've also been feeling alone which leads me to the thoughts of what exactly am I living for? From my observations around me I'm living for things. I'm living to buy stuff or to work and pay off debt for stuff I probably didn't need. Although I'm not here to complain about financial woes,..

I'm here to talk about, what are you living for? This past weekend my family had an estate/yard sale for my Grandparents stuff. It kills me when I think of them being gone and seeing the things they've accumulated over their life was a reminder that they weren't here. My cousin mentioned how a Tupperware container had an E written on it in permanent marker for my Grandmother's name Eunice. Eventually everything we possess will fade away... Today I was wondering, what can I buy to make my gameroom really hit the ceiling of WOW factor! Of course my gameroom is basically maxed out with no room to put anything else but I still need more... I need to feel happy by purchasing something, I need something that no one else has! Thing I realized today is, that's how everyone thinks. Everyone wants it all or the latest and greatest, we're just not successful if we don't have a lot of stuff! Right? Wrong...

What I read in the Bible today states that our treasure's should be stored up in Heaven, not here on earth. Here on earth things are prone to rot, decay, rust, theft... In Heaven is where you want to keep your treasures where they will stay for eternity.

So now I'm in a deep state of, what am I here for? I have to find what I'm living for, this life I'm living now just isn't it. I figure if I'm going to die I might as well die trying...

Home Video Archiving - Which media is best!?

So I'm going to post something different here, this will be a slightly technical post talking about the best archival method for future proofing your data!

When it comes to deciding what type of medium to use for archiving your data, no media offers a lifetime guarantee. Scientists can't guarantee the life span of optical disc, HDD, magnetic tape, flash or any other medium, I think simple because the medium hasn't been around that long to prove. The environment also dictates the life span of your archived medium.

I won't go into many specifics on which media is best to use and why, there's plenty of article online that compare the pros and cons. What I'm posting this blog for is to tell you regardless of what you use to archive your media, create PAR2 files! What PAR2 files allow you to do is have data redundancy. If a few sectors of your data is corrupted instead of not being able to view the data, you can repair it by using PAR2.

I don't think there's a best method on making your data redundant with PAR2 but the way I plan to make my data redundant is to create a 25% redundant PAR2 files for my data. I archive home videos and usually when I archive an entire tape, I put the contents all into a directory on my computer and burn to a Blu-ray. Some people will burn an optical disc then create an .ISO of the disc and base their PAR2 files on that. I'm sure this would work for you but I think it seems more logical to create your PAR2 files based on your directory of data (in my case 1 VHS tape) and then burn the PAR2 files to a separate disc. With this method, if a sector on your disc gets corrupted you'll be repairing an individual file and not an entire disc.

If you do experience a bad sector on your medium of choice you must first recover everything as possible with a program like ISOBuster or BadCopy. Once you can recover as much data as possible you can then run QuickPar to repair any files with corrupted sectors.

In my opinion this is the way to go in order to have more reliable archives of your precious videos or photos!

To read more visit LifeHacker!

http://lifehacker.com/5120266/burn-more-reliable-discs-with-quickpar/

Where was I...

So wow, it's been a super long time since posting a blog! I admit that I don't want to share anything too deep since I'd rather have people I meet in real life discover myself for themselves. Besides that though, here I am writing another blog!

My grandparents health is not well so I've been staying a night on the weekend to help out. Yesterday I was able to borrow some old family videos to capture and eventually write to DVD or Blu-ray. It's interesting how watching older videos can effect your opinion about people still in your life and where your life is heading.

I'm 30 years old now and I can look back on my life and see how quickly things have moved. In these videos my Grandparents are in their early 50s. All of my memories of them don't seem to have aged. I see them today in their 80s, frail and needing a lot of assistance and I wonder when did this happen? When did everything change? It literally seems like it creeped up and surprised me, I didn't see the gradual change and this is something video points out.

I'm afraid that another 30 years will slip by without me noticing. The lives we live now offer more convenience and time savings but we're over looking our lives. We don't get outside and do as much, we stay inside and sit on Facebook, our phones, watch TV, movies... we don't socialize with family, some family I didn't know existed...

I was thinking about technology compared to that of the 80s/90s. VHS tapes didn't offer the best of video quality but it offered a way to archive video. Just recently my friend lost every single photo and video of her 1 year old son due to these images being on her phone and getting deleted with a tap of a button. I'm converting videos from the 80s right now so I ask you, what technology is better? If Facebook was gone where would our relationships with people stand? If our power grid collapsed forget about people not knowing how to stay alive, people wouldn't know how to communicate. Sure people know how to talk but people in the next generation don't know the soft skills, the people skills, the personality to be-friend a person in real life. This simply friendliness is being lost. People only look out for themselves and they get off on destroying others. America's becoming corrupted and we don't even recognize it. We don't live in a modern society, we are just living in a time period, a period of people that are losing touch.

I release you...

All the lies that I've created, the false image I've shaped myself to be. I don't know how this mentality came to be but it has to end now. I never believed I was an attractive person, thought I was hideous and an unbearable sight to see, looking back on the photos of myself weighing around 210, I realize it's been a lie.

Something I have yet to discover is why I've created and have these lies looping in my mind 24/7. I didn't meet my weight loss goal for last year but the rest of my life is going to be different now. I refuse to live my life in the background, in the shadows, cowering in the dark. I'm my own worst enemy and if I can overcome myself I can overcome anything!

Here's to that bastard I've been living with, you're dead now! Here's looking toward the rest of my life! C|iii|     Cheers!

Evil in the Last Days

2nd Timothy 3:1But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,…

I know it's been a while since I posted but I've missed the blog and this scripture stood out to me today... 

I would like to talk about specific occurrences in my life but can't due to this being public, however I will talk about my thoughts of the outcome of the situations. Sometimes evilness will present it's self in a professional, respectable manner. It can come across as someone making statements they believe in and with the ability to make you feel ignorant for not considering or believing these supposed facts that are just second nature to the person. I have the feeling that this happens a lot to people but they don't consider the source of the manipulation. The Devil specializes in distorting the truth and hoping you'll accept the wrong beliefs of someone else just because you think they're respectable. 

In a world that stresses having an "open mind", some have been backed into a corner of accepting liberal agendas. If you believe in traditional values or morals you're considered screwed up in the head or narrow minded. This ultimately is a form of the Devil's work that's being pushed all over the world and so many followers are falling for it. If this world doesn't accept you for what you believe in than I feel that it's safe to say that you're doing something right!

Think of a timeline of eternal life, ETERNAL LIFE and put the measly time of our lives on it. Depending on your view point you won't even be able to make it out. I'm thinking about that because if our life here is a test of our position in the afterlife we really should take a step back and view how we spend our time. Are we lovers of money? Are we boastful and enjoy bragging to those who may be less fortunate? Do we respect others, do we offer a loving attitude to everyone? I think my worst sin is being a lover of self. If I could only stop being so focused on myself so many problems in my life (ones I create) would simply vanish. 

I'm not perfect and I know it's wrong to judge people but I'm surprised sometimes when I see people of Faith, religious leaders, being boastful or some even mocking the Lord (Holy Spirit more specifically). So many people that believe they're Christians, going to heaven are going to have such a rude awakening one day... I'm not sure what's worse, to knowingly being a sinner or to ignorantly be a Christian? The sinner may eventually seek guidance whereas the ignorant Christian thinks they're already doing God's will.

Where am I

How did I get here? The better question, where am I going? Here I am stranded in this god forsaken vessel, lost at sea. At some point I was made blind to many things... I'm able to see the beginnings of a shore but it just seems galaxies away. I worry that I'll never make it, I once was able to escape into my dreams but now I'm starting to convert them as well.
If only I could topple this invisible blockade and break these non-existent chains, perhaps then I would see that everything I need to reach the shore was already with me, inside this vessel.